Officials pass law that will put an end to annoying issue with streaming services: 'This bill was inspired by ... every exhausted parent'

If you've ever turned up the volume to hear a quiet, impactful moment of your favorite TV show, only for the adverts to practically burst your eardrums, you may be pleased about some new legislation in California.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 576, ensuring that the volume of commercials isn't able to rise above the volume of streaming shows. A law known as the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act was passed in 2010, which applied to broadcast and cable television stations, but at long last, streaming services will have to stop this disruptive technique as well.

Newsom said in a statement, "We heard Californians loud and clear, and what's clear is that they don't want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program."

Advertisers tend to crank the volume to the max during commercial breaks to grab your attention and do their job of selling as much as they can. However, we're currently in an age of overconsumption, with Earth Overshoot Day calculating that if everyone consumed as much as the average American, we would need 5.1 planet Earths to create enough resources for the population. 

Brands often use sneaky tactics to sell more products, like hiking the volume of their adverts, greenwashing, or trying to joke on social media to seem relatable, so reducing the power of commercials by turning the volume down can only be a good thing.

Senator Thomas Umberg said in a statement, "This bill was inspired by… every exhausted parent who's finally gotten a baby to sleep, only to have a blaring streaming ad undo all that hard work." 

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He continued, "SB 576 brings some much-needed peace and quiet to California households by making sure streaming ads aren't louder than the shows we actually want to watch."

Hopefully, other states will take some inspiration and ban commercials from being so much noisier than the TV shows themselves.

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